Last year, Avaya hired Charlie Giancarlo, a former executive with Cisco Systems Inc., as its chief executive officer. He was replaced by Kevin Kennedy.

Earlier this year Avaya launched Aura, a Linux server designed to function as a communications server in a multi-vendor environment, using session initiation protocol (SIP).

Last month, Nortel agreed to sell its Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) products to Ericsson and Kapsch AG. That deal, valued at US$103 million, is not expected to affect more than 10 Canadian Nortel workers.

Nortel was started in 1895 as the manufacturing unit of Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE) Inc. It was spun off as a separate company, known as Northern Electric and then Northern Telecom.

Anyone who had bought Nortel stock in January, 1996 would have made $17 for every dollar invested had they sold it in August, 2000, when Nortel dominated the Toronto Stock Exchange 300 index. At the time, its CEO was John Roth, who was replaced by Frank Dunn in October, 2000. The company quickly fell out of favour with investors and it lost US$27.3 billion in 2001.

Dunn was dismissed with cause by the board of directors in 2004 and faces criminal charges in Canada – including fraud affecting public market – which have not been proven in court. Dunn’s replacement, retired U.S. Navy Admiral Bill Owens, was hired to clean up the books and was replaced in 2005 by Mike Zafirovski, a former executive with Motorola Inc. Zafirovski left the company last August.